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USB 2.0 for Linux Coming Soon
itwerx writes "There's an article on MSNBC about USB 2.0 support in Linux. Interesting to see that the open source community is less than a year behind the most powerful software company in the world in supporting it. Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)"
NetBSD has had NetBSD support in current for quite some time. Does that make it number 2?
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
We had AMD Hammer 64 bit processor support before Windows did.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
>Interesting to see that the open source community is
>less than a year behind the most powerful software
>company in the world in supporting it.
1 Year is interesting? Seems like maybe a couple months behind would be interesting.
Interesting to see that the open source community is less than a year behind the most powerful software company in the world in supporting it. Does that make us the second most powerful now?
No, it makes us a year behind. That isn't necessarily bad given the limited number of USB 2.0 to support, but it does show where it rates in the Linux priorities. (As a comparison, consider that Linux supported Itanium very early on - and I've yet to see one in the wild...)
CNET ran this story before MSNBC. The story is Here.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
Coming? I'm using it right now, it's an experimental option in 2.4.18 (maybe earlier too).
Flawless.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I've been using USB2 on linux for a while now. Since the kernel has source available, it's possible to apply patches to add features without waiting on a vendor. It would be more accurate to say something like "mainstream usb2 support" or "usb2 in released 2.4 kernel".
FWIW, I've found USB2 to be not as fast as firewire for things like hard drives, a conclusion that windows benchmarks have also shown. So it's not like the delay in releasing 2.4.19 is really hurting anything, especially since there aren't many usb2 devices or ports around anyway.
The article is from CNET. It has just been reported again by MSNBC.
Im just imagining this conversation between Stephen Shankland (the author) and his boss.
boss, "Hi Steve, what did you want to see me about?" Steve, "Well, um, fox news offered me 2x what you're paying me, and they have neater graphics, neat DNB music between segueys, and gretta van sustren is kind of cute." boss, "Steve steve steve, do I have to remind you that you signed a 5 year contract?" Steve, "I know boss, I was hoping you'd let me go...(trails off)" boss, "fat chance!!" steve, "Fine then, we can do this the hard way!" boss, "Yea and what is that?" steve, "I'll start writing LINUX STORIES!" (just then the office goes dead silent and you hear the gasps and jaws dropping) boss, "You just try it buddy!"
And this is the [speculative] story of how pro-linux articles appear on MSNBC. Actually, if you read the article praising linux for being only a year behind, REALLY ISN'T HIGH PRAISE. Second of all, there was a time when journalists were supposed to have *ethics*, independance, and a responsibility to the truth.... Hopefully someone at MSNBC still thinks like that.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
From a high level software perspective, there wasn't that much to do.
The biggest amount of work was developing the driver for the new EHCI host controller. A new host controller was necessary for the USB wire interface changes to support the faster speeds.
The reason why development took a while for the EHCI controller was because of the lack of USB 2.0 devices. It's hard to test a driver when you have no hardware to test it against.
That being said, the article is VERY misleading. Linux has had USB 2.0 support for well over a year now and before 2.5 was forked. It's just that it was backported for 2.4 now. Even that's misleading since it's been in the 2.4.19pre tree since it was forked months ago.
OSS typically lags commercial software support, unless the hardware standards designers and hardware manufacturers work with Linux and/or Linux people right from the start. All too often, the first sample a Linux developer has to go on is bought retail the day a new product is released, and often with no hardware specs to go on. I once contacted a hardware standards group by telephone to inquire about getting a copy of the standard for development purposes. If I wasn't a member of their organization, then I'd have to pay $10,000 and sign a non-disclosure agreement. I was told membership was "very exclusive and expensive". That standard was eventually released when products came out. That was the I2O standard.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You're seeing a couple of different things happening here.
The host controller is the host side hardware which supports USB. For USB 1.1 (there was a 1.0 standard, but it's broken and hasn't been used in years) there was OHCI and UHCI.
For USB 2.0, there's EHCI.
You can't run USB 2.0 on an OHCI or EHCI HCD. You can't run USB 1.1 on an EHCI HCD.
So how does backward and forward compatibility work? Simple. Your USB 2.0 card has both 1.1 and 2.0 HCD's on it. Most likely you have a couple of OHCI controllers and a couple of EHCI controllers on it.
That's why Linux saw the 1.1 controllers, because they need to exist to support 1.1 devices plugged into the root hub. Windows will also see the 1.1 controllers for the same reason.
Now, back to my subject. I call bullshit on devices working a hell of a lot faster in Windows. Why? Because the HCD is the bottleneck. If you plug a 1.1 device into your 2.0 card, it'll still be using the 1.1 controller that's on that card. The 1.1 controller is limited to 12Mbps.
The testing I've done (as well as other people) shows that Linux is consistently faster than Windows on almost all devices. For those devices where Linux is slower, it's only slower by an insignificant amount. Hardly "a HELL of a lot".
I won't even begin to explain the ignorance behind your assertion that there is nothing to sync your paln with under Linux.
I've been using it with 2.4.18, and it's been working just fine (I have a USB 2.0 disk). The interface cards are cheap and the throughput is great. And it seems to be a simple extension of USB 1.0, so drivers like USB storage just seem to work. (Firewire, of course, works as well.)
> do you guys think [Linux] would be able to make such advancements if m$ did not exist? what are our biggest device support things that m$ didnt have first?
What the heck are you talking about?
Microsoft doesn't make advancements -- the PC hardware developers do.
Microsoft's primary role has been to hold the hardware developers back.
Do you remember, in the early nineties, when we had hardware-based Virtual Machine capabilities on the PC? Remember when, because of virtual memory and multitasking innovations from companies like Qualcomm, we were able to run multiple copies of DOS, DR-DOS, and other OSes, in parallel? What happened? Microsoft wanted users to only be able to run one OS -- DOS/Windows -- on their PCs. Thus, Microsoft tied memory management into Windows, thereby destroying further developer on PC VM capabilities.
Do you remember when the 386 came out, with its new memory protection capabilties? Do you remember how many years it took for Microsoft to provide support for those capabilities? Even Windows 95 still wasn't using it correctly. In fact, it was Linux that, while new, provided support for 386 memory protection -- long before Windows.
Do you remember when Microsoft hired a group of VMS developers from Digital to develop a stable version of Windows? Remember when they succeeded with NT 3.51? Remember when Microsoft destroyed that stability by allowing video drivers to run in kernel mode, in NT 4.0? Microsoft's history is riddled with backward steps.
Remember when, in 1990, everyone had a capable GUI, that is, eveyone but Microsoft? By the end of the eighties, we had the Macintosh, the Amiga, the Atari ST, and OS/2 and Geoworks for the PC. It wasn't until five years later that Microsoft came out with something even remotely similar, in Windows 95.
Remember when there were simple standards for LANs (SMP), security (Kerberos), printers (PCL), and video (VGA)? Microsoft didn't want open standards, because that might help another OS to compete with Windows. Now, because of Microsoft, we have polluted protocols, and complex devices drivers, tied closely into Windows. Further development of interface standards for PC hardware has slowed to a crawl.
Remember when Microsoft tried to sabotage the standards for Java and OpenGL? Remember the Halloween document where Microsoft stated their plans to "decommoditize" (i.e. destroy the openness of) Internet protocols? Have you noticed that Microsoft has been carrying through on that threat?
Were you paying attention to how long it took for Microsoft to provide a 64-bit version of Windows? The DEC Alpha version of Windows was a joke, because it was just a 32-bit version of Windows, slightly modified to be able to run on 64-bit hardware. Even now, there is doubt about Microsoft's claim of being 64-bit-ready. Meanwhile, Linux has been running on 64-bit platforms for years.
Have you noticed all of the hardware innovation that has been taking place with Linux? Just in the last few years, we have seen Linux based supercomputers, Linux-based clusters for movie graphics, Linux on IBM mainframes, Linux in car radios, Linux-based store kiosks, Linux-based digital video recorders, and so on. Many of those innovations could have taken place ten years ago, except for one thing -- they were being held back by Microsoft.
If there is one thing that has stood out about Microsoft and Windows, it is their _lack_ of innovation. Linux and Open Source are easily outstripping Windows.
Gates' own operating system design was to be UNIX-based. However, he has long since stopped coding and started managing.
You should look less at MSNBC's article as a support of open-source, or a secret desire to support Linux, then as a desire to become a serious news source.
Microsoft has been trying for years to show that they are serious about the things they decide to pursue.
Messengers, game consoles, ISP. All these things are places Microsoft didn't have to go and people didn't expect from a software company. Microsoft is just trying to get away from people thinking "Windows" when they think of Microsoft, and nothing else.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
the USB spec has generic drivers that are available to everyone. the drivers include talking to Opticle devices, talking to block devices, mice, and keyboards.
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
So nice of M$ to draw attention to the mechanism that it keeps splintered. The article phrases the situation as a model for Linux device compatiblity as if there were no other options and Linux development will alsways be broken and lagging. This is true, if you are talking about chasing M$'s broken tail. CSS has demonstrated that any device can be made impossible to talk to, regardless of technical skill.
My experience with M$ USB has been less than advertised. Windows 2000 has managed to make USB I not hot pluggable, and it manages to screw up one of my camera's flash card formating everytime I plug it in at work! At home, I tried to print out five plain text pages to a USB printer from win98. I got four pages, five error messages for lack of communications and one last message about "unknown system errors" requiring a reboot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. That's what happens when you screw around with "standards" too much.
On the other hand, pcmcia with a compact flash adaptor has worked very well. Compact flash registers itself as a new hard drive, /dev/hde in most cases, and this shows up in /var/log/messages when you plug it in. So long as your camera stores pictures unscrambled, you can get them without any silly interface software or device driver. Mount and coppy. Cannon S110 works great, Sipix has broken pictures. Yeah, pcmcia only goes 64 mbps, sigh. Too bad someone out there wants to make sure that:
1. You must use a propriatory driver to talk to your devices. This will enable DRM of the pictures you take - eventually you will have to pay per play to view or print your own pictures. That's progress!
2. That driver will not work forever and you will have to replace your device. Bitrot! more progress. My place of work is filled with old devices that stoped working due to "software upgrades". The vendors recomend, shocker, that we replace the devices.
M$ will never support a "universal" device.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> Microsoft hasn't been bashing Linux so much anymore. It sees important opportunities there...
.Net, to develop for it, and to become dependent on it. That includes building ties to Palladium.
.Net .Net support (lock-in) in Qt
> Anyway, they've been changing their atitude towards Linux and Open Source.
That's the biggest BS I've ever heard. Gates and Ballmer still run the company, and they are no more honest now than in the past.
It was just a few months ago that evidence came about that showed how Microsoft pressured Dell into dropping support for desktop Linux:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24478.html
If Microsoft is being quieter now, it's because they want something -- something that requires less hostility from Linux developers.
What Microsoft wants right now is for companies and developers to accept
This is consistent with Microsoft's earlier behaviour.
For example, once Microsoft had their polluted J++ version of Java in place, their strategy became the following:
> "At this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps." http://java.sun.com/lawsuit/051498.unfair.html
Microsoft tried a similar "keep quite and let everyone lock themselves in" strategy with Bristol's Wind/U (Windows APIs on Unix), which tended to lock Unix applications to Windows servers.
So of course Microsoft would like things to quiet down right now. It's because they've already set the traps that they hope will capture Linux and the Internet.
These traps include:
-
- Palladium
- Windows Media protocols over the Internet
- Palladium support for Apache
- MS Office lock-in on Linux (Crossover)
- ActiveX lock-in on Linux (Crossover)
-
- ActiveX support (lock-in) in Konqueror
- Windows Media lock-in on Linux (mplayer)
- Hardware partnership with AMD (kept API details secret, making Linux unstable)
- Hardware partnership with NVidia (closed source driver tied into Linux kernel)
- Hardware lock-in through NVidia (their new graphics language compiler)
- Attempted government-mandated IP-security-hardware lock-in
Actually, now that I think about it, that last one is a killer. In order for Microsoft to get Congressmen and Senators on their side, it is very important to reduce the political risk, by making Microsoft seem more benign. Thus, if Microsoft can succeed in keeping the Linux supporters quiet, then more government officials will be willing to accept the payoffs, excuse me, campaign contributions that Microsoft has offered, in exchange for selling out the American people. It would be a pretty sweet deal for Microsoft to have a law that requires the use of Microsoft technology in every computing device.
Now we have USB2, which is slightly faster, but there's such a large base of IEEE video equipment
I fully understand that. I deal with cards that have 1553 interfaces, GPIB interfaces, etc. in my work because we have equipment that needs those interfaces. But to claim that Linux should focus on the more specialized Firewire interface over the soon-to-be-ubiquitous USB 2.0 is almost as silly as claiming that USB is only good for mice and keyboards.
Without looking at the specs to see, it's rather obvious that the hardware people just redesigned the interface all over again.
>>>>>>>>>
Well, here are the specs so you don't have to make stuff up:
USB 2.0
USB 1.0
The real difference is here:
OHCI (USB 1.0 host controller, this is the better one)
UHCI (USB 1.0 host controller, the sucky one)
EHCI (USB 2.0 host controller spec, has more smarts like OHCI)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Linux developers have, in general, had better things to do, aside from the group of people working on it. Until there are devices that use it and machines that support it, there's no reason to have OS support. MicroSoft shipped support a while ago because they're pushing its adoption. Linux developers just want all the devices people have to work; they're generally not pushing particular hardware. Keeping on top of all of the standards which may or may not catch on is generally a waste of time which could be better spent working on any of the other things you mentioned.
"Does that make us the second most powerful now? :)"
No, it just validates Microsoft's FUD that Linux is a bad choice for a desktop OS because of poor hardware support.
No, Apple and their evil patents didn't sink Firewire. They let the license go for a dollar a box, then soon waived the fee altogether.
INTEL HAS THE PATENTS ON USB, and they ain't shy about making money on it. And forcing Firewire OUT, and forcing their inferior product IN.
As for complexity, that would not be expensive if the technology could get better economies of scale.
But since Wintel does not want Apple to prosper, and also since Intel was mightily miffed about little Apple taking it's USB thunder away when Firewire came out, they have FUDDed, lied, blocked, inhibited, you name it, any attempt at getting Firewire into the mainstream.
Firewire is an amazing success story -- Overachiever actually makes big despite determined opposition to Voldemor it in the crib.
Expensive complexity in chipsets is nonsense. Much more complex circuitry exists for a song -- how much is an LCD desktop screen? A video card? A CPU, jeez! A Duron 1.3 is going for $54! I picked up my Shuttle FV-24 barebone PC with Firewire on the motherboard for $190! There is no reason why Firewire is not on the mobo other than cutthroat "free" marketers making damn sure crud gets sold to nuke the hated compeitor.